


Not this Second

by stephanericher



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-11 16:49:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7900417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But it’s a nice thought, him and Shiro at the window of a spaceship, gazing out over the surface of Jupiter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not this Second

Shiro shuts off his flashlight first, plunging them halfway to darkness with the tiny click of the plastic switch and the muffled sound of the fabric as he drops it in his pocket. Keith blinks, trying to clear the spots from his eyes, his own beam still fixed on the red-brown dust of the desert floor, the base of a lone cactus leaning away from him, his dirty standard-issue boots. Shiro’s face is covered by the night, his eyes and the shape of his cheeks nearly blurring into the dark air around him. Keith flicks the switch of his flashlight, and the rest of the world falls away around them.

Shiro squeezes his hand. “You good?”

“Yeah.”

Their voices seem loud, as if the darkness magnifies them, turns them into bats echoing their sounds in lieu of seeing each other’s mouths clearly (but even as Keith’s vision begins to adjust to the darkness they don’t seem to be speaking any quieter).

Somewhere far away an owl hoots, and somewhere else another owl responds (or maybe it’s the same one repeating itself in order to feel a little less lonely).

“Look,” Shiro says, pointing up.

Keith’s seen the night sky before, out in the desert from the backseat of a car bumping along the battered old highway, from out of his old bedroom window and from his dorm room window and from the school roof and the astronomy platform. But he might as well have been seeing nothing, because out here in the dark there is everything. The stars are spread out like cities on a map, like ants on a discarded piece of pie, like sprinkles on a cupcake. All the constellations are there, but between the constellations are even more stars, faint but definitely real, distant and quiet like faint radio pings that don’t cut through the static no matter how much he tries to focus the antenna and the tuner.

Keith isn’t even aware he’s stopped breathing until he feels like his lungs are about to burst open and he exhales so sharply he starts to cough. The harsh scraping of his throat disrupts the desert stillness, and he feels a twinge of anger at himself for being so stupid, especially at a moment like this and especially with Shiro. But when he looks back up at the stars, they’re still just as stunning as they were before, on some sort of serene plain that lies beyond any mortal disturbances all the way down here.

“Whoa.”

He’s not sure he’s even said it until Shiro squeezes his hand again.

“I thought you’d enjoy it.”

Keith lowers his gaze to meet Shiro’s eyes; Shiro’s looking at him with that same half-smile he uses when Keith’s half-asleep at breakfast and about to pour milk onto the table instead of into his cereal or when he glances up when he’s reading a book he’s really into and Shiro’s looking over at him, and there’s something about it that makes him want to rub his face in case something’s stuck to it and then shy away.

“Um,” he says. “How did you find this place?”

“We went out here for summer term astronomy class. It was in the middle of August, so it was really hot and we had to wait for the sun to set, but once it did…even seeing all the stars emerge as the sky got darker, it was still so impressive.”

“Do you think it’s like this in space? I mean, there’s no atmosphere and no distant light, but…”

“It’s probably the closest we can get right now,” says Shiro.

But someday soon they’ll be astronauts; someday they’ll explore the solar system and maybe beyond (everyone says that won’t happen in their lifetimes, but they said that about parts of the outer solar system a generation and a half ago and here they are, sending missions to Miranda and Eris and probably other bodies in the next year or two, and the only reason everyone doesn’t know about those yet is that they’re still classified). Keith looks back up, his eyes scanning constellations until he finds Jupiter, bright even among the stars.

“We could go there someday,” says Shiro.

“Jupiter?”

“Yeah. Fight the deep-sea monsters of Europa, watch the Great Red Spot from up close.”

Keith laughs. More likely, they’d be taking atmospheric measurements and monitoring the orbits up close, analyzing the rings and moons as they orbited the planet. But it’s a nice thought, him and Shiro at the window of a spaceship, gazing out over the surface of Jupiter and planning their fishing trip the next day.

And they’d see a swath of sky more magnificent than this beyond Jupiter and from the opposite way, spreading out in all directions, stars and planets and moons and other things (whatever else might be out there). Could they see Earth from Jupiter? They wouldn’t be able to see the moon (not that they are tonight; it’s not rising until nearly dawn, staggered away from the stars like the kids in his class who wake up late and show up halfway through second period without seeming to care. But the moon is there; somewhere there are oceans pulled by the tidal force. It’s a weird thing for his thoughts to dwell on, not something he particularly wants to think about right now.

“Keith?”

“Hmm?”

Shiro’s looking at him in that way again, only this time it’s a little different; this time it’s the way he looks when he’s about to kiss Keith, but Keith isn’t going to wait for him to do it. Shiro’s lips are soft; his tongue runs over the inside of Keith’s lip and he’s tangling his free hand in Keith’s hair. Keith sighs and they break apart, and Shiro’s full-out grinning now.

“We should go back soon,” Shiro says.

Keith really doesn’t want to, and it’s got to be showing on his face because Shiro amends it about a second later.

“Not right this second.”

And then he kisses Keith again, and the cool desert night seems suddenly warm.

**Author's Note:**

> i still feel like i don't have a good enough grip on keith pov (so if u have any opinions regarding that, please feel free to leave them here--or if you have any keith pov prompts so i can practice more i will take them on tumblr @ stephanericherthanyou!)


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